1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to network traffic management. More specifically, embodiments of the invention are related to allowing transparent network service enhancement among wide-area application services.
2. Description of the Related Art
Network traffic management techniques have been developed that enhance performance of TCP based applications by applying various compression algorithms to data traffic between two routing devices on a network. The enhanced services such as data compression and data acceleration are provided within the same network stream established between two endpoints, instead of through tunnels or other data streams. This transparent data transfer technique allows for the network traffic to be monitored with normal networking tools.
In some cases, a first routing device between the two endpoints may compress traffic in between the first routing device and a second routing device. Further, the routing devices may alter packet sequence numbers. Once the traffic reaches the second routing device, the data packets may be decompressed and given the original sequence number.
Problems arise when a state tracking firewall, or intrusion prevention system (IPS) is interspersed somewhere within the traffic flow between the two endpoints. State tracking firewalls and IPS may drop TCP packets with modified sequence numbers. This prevents the compressed data packets from reaching a destination. On the other hand, if a routing device used to decompress data packets fails while using original sequence numbers, the endpoint may try to process the compressed data packets as if they were uncompressed, leading to data corruption.
Accordingly, what is needed is a technique for providing enhanced traffic services to traverse each section even when there is a state tracking firewall.